Sturgeon is savaged as she postures over Brexit
Academic attacks ‘sneering’ SNP
NICOLA Sturgeon was yesterday accused of a ‘cynical’ bid to exploit the Brexit vote to further her dream of ‘separation’ as she addressed EU citizens who live in Scotland.
In an angry attack on the First Minister, a Northern Irish academic accused her of building her own ‘cold house’ and said Nationalists were ‘sneering at British people’.
Glasgow University-based Patrick Harkness, of the school of engineering, spoke out at an event in Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange, where Miss Sturgeon had invited 450 EU nationals to quiz her and other SNP ministers.
Only an estimated 250 to 300 actually turned up and they heard Miss Sturgeon call on Theresa May to ‘do the humane thing’ and guarantee the right of EU citizens to remain in the UK. She also laid the groundwork for a fresh bid to seize control of immigration policy from Westminster.
There was significant support for the SNP in the room, with one Italian woman, Caroline Magoha, emotionally telling the audience of her fears for her 13year-old son’s education, claiming he had been bullied at school ahead of the EU referendum.
But the most explosive intervention came from 35-year-old Mr Harkness, who hails from County Tyrone and now lives in Lenzie near Glasgow.
He told Miss Sturgeon she should remember that ‘other people also came to Scotland but like me from elsewhere in the United Kingdom’.
There are nearly 200,000 EU nationals in Scotland and around 500,000 from the rest of the UK.
‘I think it’s just a little bit unfair for the First Minister to suggest she welcomes all people to Scotland when my homeland is the one country on earth that she wishes to distance herself [from],’ Mr Harkness said.
‘I think that this country has had enough of divisive referendums. We have had enough of us-and-them, we have had enough extreme arguments.
‘SNP backbenchers openly tweet speculating on how much people hate the English, how much people hate the Irish, and this does not generate a positive atmosphere for people like me.’
He added: ‘First Minister, I think we should recognise that you are building a cold house, too. When are you going to hold an event such as this for UK citizens to reassure us that your Nationalists will no longer speak division and hatred against us?’
Mr Harkness, who has campaigned against independence, accused the SNP of a ‘great deal of cynicism’.
Miss Sturgeon replied: ‘I admonish anybody who is anti-anybody on the basis of their nationality, whatever that nationality may be.
‘My belief in Scottish independence never has been and never will be based on a sense of where people come from.’ She said she could have called a second independence referendum immediately after the Brexit vote, but had chosen instead to look at all options to secure Scotland’s future in Europe.
While the UK Government has repeatedly attempted to reassure EU nationals living in the UK, it has yet to rule out the possibility of deportations in the future.
Caroline Magoha, 44, a receptionist who lives in Edinburgh and backs Scottish independence, urged politicians not to make EU nationals from the UK the new ‘refugees of Europe’.
She said: ‘We have to live with our bags half-packed. I don’t have any trust whatsoever in the Westminster Government. They will wake up one day and say Article 50, EU members, you have to be out within six months. They are capable of that.’
Miss Sturgeon said that she was unable to make promises about their futures because immigration is reserved to Westminster. She added: ‘It breaks my heart that as... the elected leader of this country, I am not able to sit here and give you the guarantees and the certainty that you want.’
A UK Government spokesman said: ‘The PM has been clear that she wants to protect the status of EU nationals already living here and the only circumstances in which that wouldn’t be possible is if British citizens’ rights in European member states were not protected in return.’
‘Division and hatred’